Black Boy By Richard Wright Sparknotes

Being called “nigger” everyday was something that any Black person would face living in the American South during the early 1900s. Richard Wright wrote a book called Black Boy describing his life in the Jim Crow era. This era of time in the South caused Blacks to feel like an inferior race to the Whites. The Jim Crow Laws was a statute that the South put into order in the 1880s to segregate the races. The laws segregated the workplace, bathrooms, restaurants, and parks ("Jim Crow Laws."). Wright witnessed this first hand and told about it in the book. Wright starts out as a boy in Mississippi living through poverty, hunger, fear, and hate. By the time he was six he had burnt his house down and became a “drunkard.” He hangs around a saloon

One day it was not a bad thing that his brother told on him because Richard had been playing with fire. He was lighting broom straws on fire and found it amusing. He wondered how the curtains would look on fire, so he took plenty of the straws caught them on fire and touched the hem of the curtains with them. He was terrified when he seen the flames go up. Wright stated, “Soon a sheet of yellow lit the room. I was terrified; I wanted to scream but was afraid” (Wright 4-5). The whole house burned. Richard hid. His mother was calling but he would not answer. Everyone made it out safe, but he didn’t care. He remained hidden under the house until his father realized it was him and pulled him out. Wright did not care about anything except saving himself from the shame. A struggle he has throughout his life is having feelings for anyone

In the book Wright’s father is awakened by a kitten. His father yells to kill the cat in a figurative way, Wright took it literal. He killed the cat and was later in trouble for doing so. Wright said, “My brother ran away in fright. I found a piece of rope, made a noose, slipped it about the kitten’s neck, pulled it over a nail, then jerked the animal clear of the ground” (11). He had no remorse at first because he felt he had done right by his father, but when his father found out he was furious. Wright hated his father before then but hated him even more after he got mad at him for telling him to do something. Wright did not get punished by his father for this because the father knew that if he was to punish him it would be saying that if the children listen to him, they get beat. It was his mother that made him get the cat and bury it teaching him a lesson about killing things. Wright later moved in with his grandmother that lived in Jackson, Mississippi after his father left and his mother had a